she, and people like her, would never have noticed the “fall” that was so catastrophic; they’d be born and they’d die before it finally became what it now was.
Either that, or the Towers had been constructed in a day. Given they were created by the Ancients, that was possible.
Yes.
Kaylin didn’t recognize the voice. She shook her head, as if to dislodge all the other familiar voices that could intrude at any moment. She didn’t hear it again.
The Towers grew; the buildings around them were abandoned by those who had either the desire or the ability to move. The land surrounding the six Towers took on a tinge of color; six different colors in all. There was no overlap.
She watched the sentient building that had once stood so close to Ravellon. It faded slowly from view. It wasn’t, like the other buildings, abandoned. It was bisected by two of the Towers, its land absorbed on either side by what would now be Nightshade and Liatt, the latter a fief that Kaylin had never seen except on maps like these.
The building itself vanished, crumbling into mist and nothing as Kaylin watched.
“What are the border zones?”
No answer, no new image, no new words from an unfamiliar voice, came to answer that question.
The Arkon cleared his throat, which gave Kaylin enough time to cover her ears.
The map of the fiefs and the Towers sank, once again, into liquid. The Arkon spoke, and spoke again; the mirror failed to respond. Or it responded in a fashion that she couldn’t see; with this mirror that was possible.
* * *
The Arkon did not speak again until they had trudged back through the cavern, the doors, the narrow short hall, and the various private areas. They were surrounded by the office again when he at last spoke.
“The lands that surrounded Ravellon were contaminated by the will of the ruler of Ravellon; their existence as ‘normal’ lands had been heavily compromised. This would include the building nearest Ravellon. The Towers were created to anchor those lands, to return them to a base state that those who dwelled in them would recognize, and that Shadow could not as easily manipulate.”
“Corporal Handred?”
Severn, who had said almost nothing since their arrival, nodded. “I concur. I have crossed the borders between many of the fiefs. They are not fixed; they appear so, from the outside, and when one emerges, the streets are very much the streets that would be expected between one step and the next. But the internals shift, sometimes dramatically, sometimes more subtly, when one has taken that step. If the Towers served as anchors for the lands that surrounded Ravellon, this would make some sense.”
“And the building you discovered today?”
“The exit, and the building itself, seemed in keeping with the building Kaylin saw in her initial view of the pre-fief period.”
The Arkon didn’t ask Severn how he knew what Kaylin had seen, and Kaylin didn’t bother to explain it. She was a bit surprised because Severn almost never acknowledged the actual connection.
“The placement of the exit was also in keeping with that vision. When I crossed that border, however, I did not see the building in question. I either crossed in a different place—”
“Given the size of the former building’s lands, it would be difficult to miss,” the Arkon countered.
Severn nodded. “Or other forces are at work within the border. I’m inclined to assume the latter.”
“Do you also agree with Corporal Neya’s conclusions?”
“It would not have been my initial guess, but...yes. If Kaylin believes that the Barrani man we met in the building was somehow the Avatar of the building itself, I would give that belief strong weight.”
“Bellusdeo?”
She shrugged, the fief shrug that the rest of the cohort had taken up almost upon their arrival beneath Helen’s roof. “I have far less experience with sentient buildings than any of you. But given their creators, I would guess that destroying them would be difficult if the creators themselves were not responsible for that destruction.
“The building clearly fell off the map that Kaylin’s words invoked when the Towers rose. If it is indeed the same building, the permeability of the border zone might explain how we entered it at all.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No, sadly, I don’t. I do, however, believe that Kaylin is materially correct. We were in that building. The building itself somehow survived the fall of Ravellon and the creation of the Towers; it surrendered its hold on the lands that it had once stewarded.” She frowned.
So did Kaylin; the